Bizarre! NFF appoints dead referee for league game

Bizarre! NFF appoints dead referee for league game

As the wrangle over the NFF seat continues, one of the factions has appointed a deceased arbiter for Sunday’s NPFL clash between the Seasiders and Jos Elephant

Chris Giwa’s group of the Nigeria Football Federation has listed a late referee Wale Akinsanya for this weekend’s Week 13 Nigeria Professional Football League fixture between Warri Wolves and Giwa FC.

Akinsanya passed away during a Nigeria Referees Association fitness test on January 22, 2016 and has since been committed to mother earth.

In a statement sent to the League Management Company and signed by Yahaya Adama, the deceased arbiter was appointed to handle the clash billed for the Warri City Stadium, and to be assisted by Tope Orowole and Adeleke M.

On Wednesday, Giwa’s group had rejected the peace move by sports minister, Solomon Dalung to end the crisis rocking the football federation.

In a statement signed by the group’s chairman of chairmen, Effiong Johnson, it urged Nigerians to disregard the action of the minister, as it was to deceive football followers.

“In the first place, the minister is a party to the case in court as the fourth defendant and when the court by an Order made on April 8 2016 restored all its previous orders, including the order which nullified and set aside the election which purportedly produced Amaju Pinnick et al,” Johnson wrote in a statement.

“The minister betrayed his partisanship in the dispute by wasting no time to hold brief for the Amaju Pinnick group in his erroneous and flawed public statement that the group was entitled to 30 days to appeal against the ruling of the court.

“The minister has thus lost the moral podium to midwife any settlement of the dispute. Secondly, the composition of the membership of the so-called reconciliation committee leaves no one in doubt that it was constituted only for a hatchet job for the Amaju Pinnick group.

“Virtually all members of the committee are associates of the Amaju Pinnick group. For instance, Musa Amadu is not only a co-defendant with the minister in the case but is also the chairman of the Organising & Disciplinary Committee of the Amaju Pinnick group. Barrister Okey Obi has made statements in many fora on behalf of the Amaju Pinnick group and has also appeared in court as counsel to the defendants, while Paul Bassey is known to be an avowed supporter of the Amaju Pinnick group.”

Former NFF boss Ibrahim Galadima is the head of the seven-man reconciliation committee, which has one week to submit its report.